Page 28

“Have you been here before?” I ask.

“Sure, came through on my way to Anchorage last time. That’s where I’m based. It’s nice to be deported, actually,” they tell me. “The depo train brings you all the way here.”

“I guess that’s nice.”

Ren pulls me around a corner inside the station and into an elevator. There are videos of people in their underwear playing on the wall, advertisements for VR games and role plays.

I close my eyes, not used to the onslaught of flashing images, the people so beautiful and larger than life, the dramatic close-ups of faces and bodies and the vibrant, saturated color.

When we step out of the elevator and head outside it’s muted tones of green and brown.

This doesn’t look anything like the carefully cultivated gardens back home, or the wild forests of New England. It’s scrubby, overgrown. It’s clean but…sad. We head down the road, the sidewalk cracked with weeds shoving their way through.

In town there are clusters of screens. I don’t see manypeople. There’s one other guy with a hat pulled low over his eyes, looking like he hopped on in New York. He disappears down an alley between two buildings and it’s only Ren and me.

“Where are all the people?” I ask Ren. I’d peek in the windows to find them, but there are none of those either. It makes me nervous. “And where are the windows?”

“The new architecture.” Ren shrugs. “Very efficient.”

I blink. “It’s so ugly.”

“Take out your phone,” Ren urges. “I need coffee and snacks, there must be a place.” I hand Ren my phone, not quite knowing what to do with it.

Ren swipes on the screen, then stops walking, turning back to where we saw the man disappear down the alley. “It’s down there.”

“What’s down there?” I wonder.

“The coffee shop.” Ren watches my face carefully and laughs at what they see there. Ren’s laugh is throaty and warm. It relaxes me immediately.

“Ever had coffee, little PS princess?” they ask.

I straighten. I’m not a Peaceful Society princess. I’m a rebel. I’m dressed like one, at least.

“Sure,” I say. I’ve never had coffee. All drugs are strictly forbidden back home. Even chocolate, which my mom talks about sometimes, was banned for having low amounts of caffeine, and coffee is definitely not allowed.

The Society decided that any drug that would cause a change to the way you feel or act would be banned.

We get to a door with an open sign and Ren jerks it open. Inside it’s pretty and warm. The walls shimmer a little—they’re screens but the picture they show isbeautiful, warm wooden beams and stonework and a fake window to a garden beyond, like an old-fashioned nook somewhere.

The smell in here is earthy and smoky and I take a long breath in. A man sits in a chair behind a counter, wearing a pair of e-glasses and waving his hands in the air with motions I don’t recognize. There’s no sign of the man we saw on the street.

On the other side of the room are several sliding doors, some closed, some open. Inside are more screens. I poke my head in curiously and Ren chuckles.

“You can drink your coffee anywhere in the world, there’s even VR goggles and gloves.”

I guess people close the doors and drink their coffee in tiny rooms. The rooms are so small, I do not want to sit in there. Ren asks the man in the chair for two coffees and he pulls off his glasses with a sigh and a pointed look at a touchscreen we didn’t use.

“Sorry, could we get one with cream and sugar?” Ren asks, no apology in their voice. The man, sighing again, pulls two mugs from under the counter, muttering about foreigners, and fills them with a dark, shiny liquid.

“Sweet one’s for her,” Ren says, tilting their head to indicate me.

I shrug. I wouldn’t know, but I trust Ren. We pick up our mugs. Mine is warm in my hand. It feels good after the chill in the air outside. Once we pay, the man sits down in the chair in a bit of a huff and puts his glasses back on, his arm coming up to swipe in the air, maybe playing a game.

Ren stares a minute before pushing on the door. “Come on, let’s go sit on the bench.”

Outside the door there are a couple of benches and a lonely tree, green and squished between the gray, windowless buildings. A chorus of chirps comes from it, a flock of tiny sparrows poking around in its leaves.

We sit down and I take a sip of the coffee. It’s warm and creamy with a rich, bitter undertone and I love it. I drink a few more sips and right away there’s a difference, a tingling. Caffeine is a stimulant, and this drink has a lot of it, or I’m not used to it.